I don't mind Soundwave having a car mode and the design was pretty nice because with the way they designed his head you could instantly tell it was Soundwave.

I wasn't too crazy about the car they chose because it felt too much like product placement. It the car had been blue that would have been nicer than the color they chose for the film. Silver has just been way over done in the film series.

But no vocoder that's just sad. It wouldn't have added hardly anything to the cost of the production and it would have been a perfect nod to the past because even people who can't remember the robots names from when they were a kid manage to remember the voice. It would be like if Doctor Who all of a sudden decided to change the voice of the Daleks to something that sounded like normal people.

I am probably one of the only few here who doesn't want vocoder. I loved Soundwave's voice. To be honest, when I first heard that Frank Welker was going to voice Soundwave I was a little nervous. But when I heard that awesome voice I knew that all was fine with Soundwave. The only thing I think Soundwave could have done better was kill Bumblebee. But Bumblebee has very little chance of that ever happening to him.

OP, are you going to start a chain of "Could [insert character here] have been better?"-threads?

Just like with Shockwave; could Soundwave have been better? Yes. Could he have been worse? Yes.

I loved both his RotF and DotM designs. I enjoyed his roles (if ever small) in the two movies. If I had to change anything about him in the movieverse, it'd be to have him transform/be seen in robot mode at least once in RotF and to have the classic vocoder effect on his voice (if only to lessen the constant complaining about the lack thereof).